Two Los Angeles City Council members Thursday called for Santa Monica Airport to shut down its six flight schools and make permanent an experimental takeoff route over neighborhoods even though it triggered thousands of complaints last year. Responding to Los Angeles residents in nearby Venice, Mar Vista and West Los Angeles, council members Bill Rosendahl and Janice Hahn introduced a resolution asking their colleagues to support the flight school closures and a departure procedure that for six months had required certain propeller aircraft to head toward the ocean over the Santa Monica neighborhoods of Sunset Park and Ocean Park.

Seeing dollar signs Re "Billionaire brothers undermine democracy, demonstrators say," Jan. 31 Heaven forbid that brothers Charles and David Koch host a meeting to discuss conservative causes and how to support them. How undemocratic! Worse yet is that they contribute financially to those causes. Now comes the ultimate in hypocrisy when a retired teacher says: "It's putting democracy in the hands of people like the Kochs and others. It's not who you vote for; it's how much money you've got. " I guess he forgot about the teachers unions and others.

Going to the dogs? Re "Downtown dogs bring growls," May 23 Count me as a downtown resident (I live at the corner of Pee and Poo) who is sick of the dog population, which is emblematic of the selfish, trendy, inconsiderate human population. Downtown is not dog friendly, and I am convinced that the typical downtown L.A. dog owner has less regard for animal rights than a fur trapper. It's all about being fashionable at the expense of a helpless creature. I live in a loft where lonely dogs can be heard barking at all hours of the day and night.

A Santa Monica sushi restaurant facing federal charges for serving endangered whale meat appears set to close its doors Saturday, according to a statement posted to The Hump's website Friday which called the decision a "self-imposed punishment." "The Hump hopes that by closing its doors, it will help bring awareness to the detrimental effect that illegal whaling has on the preservation of our ocean ecosystems and species," read the statement on the restaurant's longstanding website.

After the model plane Claire L. Walters built failed to fly, she piled all of her dolls into a wagon and pulled them through her Santa Ana neighborhood as she tried to sell them. She was 3 and longed for the cash to buy an airplane that would soar into the sky. By 1941, at age 17, she had flown solo and was on her way to fulfilling a goal first declared in grade school -- to become a pilot and teach others how to fly. Walters, who ran her flight school for 27 years in Santa Monica and co-founded the annual Palms to Pines Air Race for women, died Jan. 1 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.